


Change of course

by Miscellany



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Getting Together, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 11:34:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6983284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miscellany/pseuds/Miscellany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the worst time to start a new relationship. In Tony's defence, it's by accident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Change of course

Three weeks after meeting her Tony asks Peter's aunt to move in with him.

The thing is, he has too much time to think. With Rhodey recovering he can't afford to hole up in the lab, and calling Pepper is out of the question. She was against this superhero thing before, now that he's gotten Rhodey damaged he half expects her to file for custody.

And it's starting to dawn on him that this break might be as permanent as a temporarily out of order Russian lavatory. He still loves Pepper, he really does. She's still the agricultural produce of his eye and probably always will be. It just turned out that's not enough. If he doesn't want to stop now after Rhodey and Cap and that other thing he's put in the deep freezer for now he never will stop, and clearly the Accords aren't the thing that's going to convince Pepper that superheroing is reasonably safe.

Thus, thinking. But not about inventions, or Rhodey, or Pepper, or the Avengers, or that other thing. Which is how Tony finds himself considering if it was a good idea to bring a fifteen-year-old into a fight involving another unstable teenager, a quasi-robot in a Pinocchio phase, a brainwashed wind-up soldier and Inigo Montoya. A fight that ended up with the kid seeing double and requiring a CAT scan. The kid that's even younger than the one whose death sparked Tony's crisis of conscience.

Which is why he asks Peter's aunt to move in with him at the compound. A proposition that, Tony admits, may have sounded like something likely to end with a restraining order in the foreseeable future. Luckily for Tony, Spider Aunt just says she has a policy of never agreeing to live together with a guy before the first cup of coffee. Which is when Tony points out they already had a cup of coffee in her kitchen. He can't help it, flirting is a hard-wired response.

So they go for coffee and it's like before, when Tony would charm some new, beautiful and easily dismissible woman in an embarrassingly commonplace avoidance and self-esteem booster maneuver. Except it's not like before, because they talk about Peter and how much he's looking up to Tony and how in the absence of any other male authority figure he might get too attached. Also that May (and she's just May by then) wouldn't want to impose on Tony, but that she thinks he'll be a good influence on Peter. By the time the conversation gets to May's hectic job as a nurse Tony's aware he's being gently let down.

It's not like before at all.

Tony goes home and watches Rhodey do the moonwalk and they celebrate by getting pizza and watching Top Gun and it's good. He doesn't dwell on getting ditched, it's not firing him up in some reverse psychology way. He feels like he got a gift, a genuine glimpse into a life that had nothing to do with him, his fuckups, inadequacies and burnt bridges.

He calls Peter every now and then, and the kid responds with eagerness that makes Tony feel both glad for his decision and like an impostor. He's not a good role model. He could build Peter a better father figure than he'd make. But Peter doesn't seem to think so, and he's started acting smarter about his hobby (the spider-manning, not the dumpster-diving) so Tony figures he might be making a positive difference for a change.

Then he gets a thank-you call from May. Then Peter brings him cookies during a routine suit maintenance visit. It wasn't just flattery, that woman can cook. So he thanks her for the cookies, and the thank-you ping-pong match somehow ends up with another date.

That doesn't go like a typical date either, unless Tony's been out of the game for so long cathartic talks about loss and the struggle to let go and move on have become the new dinner and a movie.

Date two, or is that three, is a lunch on a bench across the street from May's hospital that ends up with a dog peeing on Tony's pants’ leg and May laughing so hard a noodle goes down the wrong pipe and Tony almost performs the Heimlich.

Date four actually ends with abdominal thrusts, but not of the emergency variety.

If there's one word for it, it's freeing. Pepper knew him inside and out. Pepper finished his sentences. With that authority of knowledge when she decided there was no hope for them he could never rise up to the occasion and prove her wrong.

There are so many potential pitfalls. Tony is self-centered and neurotic and no good with kids when they aren't other people's responsibility. Once he tells May about Peter's atypical puberty issues and his own enabling perhaps neither Peter nor she will want to have anything to do with him. He's been in love only once and look how that turned out. Look how his parents turned out.

When he asks May to move in with him the next time, she says yes. Then she cries harder than when she found out about Peter.

Peter starts calling him Uncle Tony. It makes him sound like a Mafia don but for some reason Tony doesn't mind.


End file.
